Mass Email in Wodify can be a very powerful tool, but with that great power must also come great responsibility. Wodify allows you to use your discretion in sending Mass Emails to unsubscribed Clients and Leads, and/or recipients.

• This article will walk you through the regulatory requirements for sending mass emails, as well as best practices to make sure they land in your users' inbox.

Note: It's extremely important to read and follow the "Compliance with mass email regulations" below

• Because Wodify now allows you to distinguish between "Marketing" and "Transactional" emails, it is technically possible to violate these regulations
• Violations can result in spam complaints from users; these complaints tarnish your "email reputation", making it more likely that any email from you goes directly to spam

In this article, we'll cover:

• Compliance with mass email regulations
• Best practices for mass emails

Compliance with mass email regulations

Mass Email compliance around the world is mainly about providing an Unsubscribe function in all marketing emails, and complying when a user unsubscribes. As a result, it's important to define what a marketing email is, vs a transactional email that can still be sent to unsubscribed users when they contain critical business information.

• Wodify gives you the option to email users that have unsubscribed from your mass emails, so that you can reach them by email with important announcements, by excluding the Unsubscribe link from your mass email.
  • Including an Unsubscribe link in your email will only send to subscribed users, and exclude any recipients that have already unsubscribed
  • Not including the Unsubscribe link allows you to send an email to all selected users, even if they've unsubscribed

The bottom line is that any mass email you send that contains marketing content must also include an Unsubscribe link. Including the Unsubscribe link will ensure that anyone that has already unsubscribed does not receive that email. Marketing emails include (but are not limited to):

• Special offers
• Upcoming events
• Business newsletters

Please note: it's almost always necessary to include an unsubscribe link when emailing:

• Leads
• Inactive Clients

Transactional emails are typically defined as 1:1 interactions in response to client actions, like invoice notifications or password reset emails. But here are some great examples of transactional emails that can be sent out in bulk, because they contain critical business information:

1. Emailing members that reserved for a class, to let them know the class has been canceled
   • in this case, reserving a spot in class is what allows this transactional email, even if the member has unsubscribed
2. Emailing all active members to let them know the business will be closed, or certain services will be limited
   • in this case, being an active member allows you to send them critical business updates, even if they've unsusbscribed
3. Emailing everyone with access to a specific program, to let them know of changes to that program, or the classes tied to that program
   • in this case, having membership access to the program allows you to notify them of critical updates to that program
4. Automated Emails

Just remember that, if these emails also contain any sort of marketing material, they will be considered a marketing email, and you will be required to add the Unsubscribe link.

Tip: As an admin, you do have the ability to re-subscribe an unsubscribed user through the Profile section of their client profile. Please keep in mind that you need their express permission, preferably in writing, to resubscribe them

Best practices for mass email

It's not always easy to get people to read your emails! We've refined our mass email infrastructure to help all of your emails through Wodify pass through your members' and leads' automated spam filters without issue; but there are some things directly within your control that can help make sure your emails:

• land squarely in their inbox
• actually get opened and read

Here are our best practices for building your mass emails, based on our research and experience. None of these are hard rules; just guidelines for more effective open rates:

1. Personalize your emails as much as possible 
   • use Recipient First Name placeholders to autofill personal client details
   • Break up your mass emails into smaller segments (like Location or Program), and include details specific to each Segment
2. Use recognizable sender info - you have the ability to customize your sender name and address, your reply to address, and a lot more in the email. Make sure it's info that your recipients would know or recognize!
3. Avoid spammy language in your subject line - think of the emails in your own spam inbox; a lot of them are there because the subject line reads "FREE!!!!" or "Maximize your potential" or "Transform in 30 days"
   
   • As a fitness business, these terms may very well apply to what you want to communicate!
   • But readers (and spam filters) will always err on the side of caution when they see subject lines that advertise something that "seems too good to be true"
4. Use a relevant subject line and preview text - in Wodify you can customize both the subject line and the preview text of your mass emails. If these don't match the actual content of the email, readers will be much less likely to open the next one
5. Don't use too many hyperlinks - we recommend 2-3 hyperlinks at most, per email. This is a common practice of spammers, to flood an email with links
   • Also review the links you're sending, to make sure they work!
6. Send at optimal times for clicks/opens - this might take some time to perfect, as every region, business, or even person can be different. Take the time to study your email metrics, including Open and Click Rates.
   1. Do more of your members open morning, midday, or evening emails?
   2. Once you've narrowed that down, identify the specific hours that are most successful
7. Manage your recipients - keep your engagement rates high by removing recipients that you know won't open your emails. High-engagement emails are much less likely to be marked as spam
   
   • • an easy place to start is making sure you're not sending frequent emails to users who have already left the business, or leads that have gone cold for a while!
     • you can always adjust your Segments by adding more rules that disqualify inactive clients, etc. which will exclude specific users from that Segment
8. Finally, here are some external resources that we recommend for further reading on these types of best practices:
   1. https://www.attentive.com/blog/email-marketing-deliverability - Deliverability best practices for your marketing emails
   2. https://www.lemwarm.com/blog/108-email-subject-line-templates - Email subject lines that don't sound spammy
   3. https://www.litmus.com/blog/the-email-metrics-marketers-measure-and-the-ones-they-should - How to measure your mass email metrics for success

If you have any further questions about mass email regulations and best practices, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@wodify.com